THE EMOTIONS OF THE HEART.
I entered the room where his body lay; I approached it with reverence,
not fear: I looked; the recollection of the past crowded upon me. I saw
that form which, but a little before, was animated with a soul which did
honour to humanity, stretched without sense or feeling before me. ’Tis a
connection we cannot easily forget:—I took his hand in mine; I repeated
his name involuntary;—I felt a pulse in every vein at the sound. I
looked earnestly in his face; his eye was closed, his lip pale and
motionless. There is an enthusiasm in sorrow that forgets impossibility;
I wondered that it was so. The sight drew a prayer from my heart: it was
the voice of frailty and of man! the confusion of my mind began to
subside into thought; I had time to meet!
I turned with the last farewell upon my lips, when I observed old Edwards
standing behind me. I looked him full in the face; but his eye was fixed
on another object: he pressed between me and the bed, and stood gazing on
the breathless remains of his benefactor. I spoke to him I know not
what; but he took no notice of what I said, and remained in the same
attitude as before. He stood some minutes in that posture, then turned
and walked towards the door. He paused as he went;—he returned a second
time: I could observe his lips move as he looked: but the voice they
would have uttered was lost. He attempted going again; and a third time
he returned as before.—I saw him wipe his cheek: then covering his face
with his hands, his breast heaving with the most convulsive throbs, he
flung out of the room.
THE CONCLUSION.
HE had hinted that he should like to be buried in a certain spot near the
grave of his mother. This is a weakness; but it is universally incident
to humanity: ’tis at least a memorial for those who survive: for some
indeed a slender memorial will serve;—and the soft affections, when they
are busy that way, will build their structures, were it but on the paring
of a nail.
He was buried in the place he had desired. It was shaded by an old tree,
the only one in the church-yard, in which was a cavity worn by time. I
have sat with him in it, and counted the tombs. The last time we passed
there, methought he looked wistfully on the tree: there was a branch of
it that bent towards us waving in the wind; he waved his hand as if he
mimicked its motion. There was something predictive in his look! perhaps
it is foolish to remark it; but there are times and places when I am a
child at those things.
I sometimes visit his grave; I sit in the hollow of the tree. It is
worth a thousand homilies; every noble feeling rises within me! every
beat of my heart awakens a virtue!—but it will make you hate the
world—No: there is such an air of gentleness around, that I can hate
nothing; but, as to the world—I pity the men of it.
FOOTNOTES
{15} The reader will remember that the Editor is accountable only for
scattered chapters and fragments of chapters; the curate must answer for
the rest. The number at the top, when the chapter was entire, he has
given as it originally stood, with the title which its author had affixed
to it.
{61} Though the Curate could not remember having shown this chapter to
anybody, I strongly suspect that these political observations are the
work of a later pen than the rest of this performance. There seems to
have been, by some accident, a gap in the manuscript, from the words,
“Expectation at a jointure,” to these, “In short, man is an animal,”
where the present blank ends; and some other person (for the hand is
different, and the ink whiter) has filled part of it with sentiments of
his own. Whoever he was, he seems to have caught some portion of the
spirit of the man he personates.